Every language/script/text has a number of features and some are more pertinent than others … grammar makes a sentence “correct” but it does not give it meaning necessarily.
For example if I say: “sleep ideas furiously colourless green”
These are just a string of words … but if I say “Colourless, green ideas sleep furiously” I have made a sentence which is grammatically correct albeit totally nonesensical … it is correct because of the structure:
Adjective 1, Adjective 2, Noun, Verb, Adverb - The CLAUSE of the sentence is found in the relationship between the Noun and the Verb … “Ideas Sleep” - but in reality - Ideas do not sleep …
However, the mind is a wonderful thing … it can make sense of things that are otherwise not prevalent in the text. I can easily say that Adjective 1 points to the physical nature of “ideas” - and true enough an idea in itself is not “tangible” and all intangible things cannot be constituted of tangible things - colour is tangible.
On the other hand Adjective 2 “green” although a colour cannot be taken as a colour for it would contradict with Adjective 1, so the mind can give it an allegorical meaning … say “environmentally friendly” … and ideas can indeed be so … So the verb - do ideas sleep? Well ideas can be raised or entertained and conversely they can be dismissed or put to rest. So the mind can interpret the verb association of ideas sleeping to ideas being dismissed … the adverb “furiously” would be somewhat oxymoronic with respect to sleeping … so the mind can deem the term to be exaggeration and contextualise it to be associated with an idea that when put to rest it keeps popping back up …
So in this process I have interpreted the nonsensical phrase:
“Colourless, green ideas sleep furiously” to mean - “Ideas are invisible, but those that are environmentally friendly thoughts if dismissed will keep coming to mind”
All of a sudden the mind makes sense out of the nonsense … And for sure each mind will do this in different ways …
What we need to acknowledge is:
Grammar rules are necessary to make a proper sentence - despite whether those sentences are straightforward or not …
Next we need to see if they are straightforward or not by examining them … literally first … but then even though we may understand them we allow them to be further explained by the one who has presented them to us … We should not be hasty to formulate an understanding on them … This is why our blessed forerunners the Sahabah of RasoolAllah (SAW) never or seldom proposed answers to questions like “do you know what this means?” They in their wisdom resigned they formulated opinions to the guidance of their leader …
They used to say … “Allah (SWT) and RasoolAllah (SAW) know best” - the way they used to view the concept of “understanding” was not something that a person actively did … but what Allah (SWT) had given to them … guidance hence is the basic premise thereafter understanding can come - there is no understanding without guidance …
Grammar in Arabic follows a certain set rules - it is more rigid than English grammar - just like the sounds of the language are “set” you articulate in sound exactly what you see - unlike English - which has silent letters and sounds formed by different combinations … Arabic is phonetically articulated … yes, just like that it is also … definitely constructed - so much so that it appears mathematical … Hence, my use of the term “grammatical logic” means the rules of Arabic grammar …
This must be considered different to the common term “logic” which is “mantiq” in Arabic and is a part of Ilm-ul-Kalam … This “logic” IS the science of extracting proper meaning by evaluating against truth and falsehood … This is very much associated to meaning.
Reality is hard to discern it may even be impossible to discern. However, “logic” is an approach to that … but we are not so arrogant to apply our logic to the meanings of things not before we see what explanation is given regarding those accounts.
Please comment and/or elaborate
